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After all the Oscar buzz, did 'Birth of a Nation' get a nomination?

Updated on January 24, 2017 at 12:37 PMPosted on January 24, 2017 at 9:34 AM

Sundance-Birth of a Nation Effect

In this image released by Fox Searchlight Pictures, from left, Armie Hammer portrays Samuel Turner, Nate Parker portrays Nat Turner and Jayson Warner Smith portrays Earl Fowler in a scene from "The Birth of a Nation." The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, was purchased for a record $17.5 million. (Fox Searchlight Pictures via AP)
(AP)

When Nate Parker's film "Birth of a Nation" debuted at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, it generated Oscar buzz. The 2015 Oscars had generated backlash over a lack of diversity, leading to the #OscarsSoWhite social media campaign.

The film follows the life of Nat Turner, who leads the 1831 slave rebellion in Southampton County. The film won the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize award for dramatic feature at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, according to Variety. It even set off a bidding war that led to Fox Searchling putting a festival record of $17.5 million forward to acquire the distribution rights, according to Deadline.

But the film was absent from the nominations announced Tuesday morning for the 89th annual Academy Awards, which will be presented in a Feb. 26 ceremony hosted by comedian Jimmy Kimmel and aired live on ABC. The nominations largely followed the playbook from this year's Golden Globes nominations.

Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin, a co-writer on "The Birth of a Nation," were accused of rape in 1999 while they were students and wrestling teammates at Penn State University. The accuser claimed they harassed, intimidated and stalked her after she pressed charges.

Parker was acquitted, and it partly had to do with him previously having consensual oral sex with the accuser, according to Variety. Celestin, on the other hand, was convicted of sexual assault. He appealed the decision but the new trial never made it back to court because the accuser did not want to testify again.

Parker addressed the case in interviews with both Deadline and Variety, which were published Aug. 12. The latter would then publish an interview with the accuser's brother four days later, which revealed that she had committed suicide in 2012 after overdosing on sleeping pills.

A number of opinion pieces followed that addressed whether it was necessary to watch "The Birth of a Nation" given the controversy surrounding Parker. Take Roxane Gay's piece in The New York Times, which stated that she "cannot value a movie, no matter how good or 'important' it might be, over the dignity of a woman whose story should be seen as just as important..."

"The Birth of a Nation" earned a 72 percent "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 68 out of 100 rating on Metacritic and, even then, its reviews addressed the controversy in one way or another.

The nominees are ...

Departing from a decades-old practice, the nominations weren't announced before a live audience of reporters, publicists and academy officials. Instead, the reveal will come during a closed program, announced by Jennifer Hudson and Brie Larson, and fed live to Oscars.org and "Good Morning America."

The musical "La La Land," which won the Golden Globe for best picture, landed a record-tying 14 Academy Awards nominations, matching it with "Titanic" and "All About Eve." It earned nods for best picture, its stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, its songs and its 32-year-old writer-director, Damien Chazelle.

Following two years of "OscarsSoWhite" furor, the Academy of Motion Pictures fielded a notably more diverse field of nominees, led by Barry Jenkins' luminous coming-of-age portrait "Moonlight," Denzel Washington's "Fences" and Theodore Melfi's "Hidden Figures," according to The Associated Press.

And in the only real surprise of the nominations, Mel Gibson's World War II drama "Hacksaw Ridge" landed a best picture nod and Gibson scored an unexpected best director nomination.

Best original song in a motion picture: "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" from "La La Land," ''Can't Stop the Feeling!" from "Trolls," ''City of Stars" from "La La Land," ''The Empty Chair" from "Jim: The James Foley Story," ''How Far I'll Go" from "Moana."